October 2020
Stephan Bodian ~ How Teachers Go Astray: Exploring the Core Principles of Genuine Spiritual Integrity ~ 4 week Course
Wednesdays: Oct. 14, 21, 28 & Nov. 4
9:00 – 10:30 am, Pacific Time
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Event will be recorded and emailed to participants after each meeting.
You're welcome to join even if you can't attend all the live sessions.
Those who assume the role of spiritual teacher represent a whole world of meaning to their students. When they fail to embody the truths they teach and act in unconscious, manipulative, or abusive ways, they betray their students’ trust and shake their confidence in the value and validity of spiritual awakening. Over the years I’ve worked with many people who have reported being exploited or betrayed by their teacher, and I’ve written extensively about the issue, including a recent article outlining what I consider the basic principles of teacher integrity*.
Among these principles: the teacher doesn’t need anything from you, including your love, admiration, veneration, power, or money; the teacher does not require your loyalty or allegiance to anything but the truth of your being as you understand it; the teacher’s primary purpose is to further your spiritual unfolding, not to build her organization or expand her popularity on social media; and the teacher does not attempt to organize, orchestrate, or control your personal life and does not purport to know what’s best for you on a personal level.
In this class we will explore these guideliness in detail, including why they are so important for the student’s evolution, how teachers go astray, the problem of narcissism, and how the failure to live up to these guidelines can cause lasting pain and trauma. The course is intended not only for those who have been hurt in this way who might want to share and investigate the issues it’s raised for them, but also for those who want a clear sense of what to look for in a teacher and what genuine integrity really entails.
As always, each class will include guided meditation that grounds our exploration in an awakened perspective, teachings and pointers, and ample time for dialogue and discussion.
*(The root of the word integrity is the Latin for whole or complete; when we act from our wholeness, our essential non-separateness, as a teacher is called upon to do, we’re unable to take advantage or cause harm to others.)
Stephan Bodian has been sharing the direct approach to spiritual awakening for more than 40 years. A former Buddhist monk, a licensed psychotherapist, and a longtime student of Advaita master Jean Klein, Stephan received Dharma transmission from Adyashanti in 2001. Since 2007 he has taught the annual months-long School for Awakening, which will begin again, in online form, in 2021. His books include Wake Up Now and Beyond Mindfulness.
More about Stephan Bodian: www.stephanbodian.org
Sliding Scale: $75 to $95
Some Partial Scholarships Available.
Please Register Early if you can.
Ellen Emmet ~ The Awakening Body
This is an opportunity to meet with a group of like-minded friends. We gather around the non-dual teaching with a particular focus on the realm of the body, its tactility and feelings, from the perspective of our shared listening Presence. This approach to the body is a form of ‘somatic inquiry’ that invites us to open to the totality of our felt, tactile and sensorial experience moment by moment, free of any agenda, allowing us to uncover the open Presence which is our essential identity.
Ellen will guide a gentle experiential meditation, followed by a conversation where participants may ask questions or share their experiences.
Ellen’s deepest intuition was confirmed when she met her teacher, Francis Lucille. In his presence, she recognized the eternal, limitless and universal nature of our shared reality. Over many years, her understanding deepened to touch all levels of experience. The process of aligning and stabilizing all aspects of her life to this understanding has continued to unfold since then.
Today, Ellen offers meetings and retreats in The Awakening Body, sharing a direct exploration of reality sourced in the tradition of Kashmir Shivaism and self-inquiry as transmitted through Francis Lucille and his teacher, Jean Klein. In addition, she has a private practice as a psychotherapist and facilitator of Authentic Movement. Her background of Dance Movement Therapy and Transpersonal Psychology is shaped by the non-dual understanding. Ellen lives in Oxford, England with her husband, Rupert Spira.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Stephan Bodian ~ What Does Nondual Really Mean?
Everyone seems to be using this spiritual buzzword these days, but misunderstandings and misconceptions abound. In fact, there sometimes appear to be as many versions of nondual as there are teachers espousing it. Does it mean reality is just a single undifferentiated whole, and being awake means experiencing oneness with everything all the time? What about our differences? Does the nondual view invalidate science, which is based on studying and measuring discrete phenomenon in a seemingly objective world? Is this world merely an illusion, or is it an expression of a deeper whole? And how do the major traditions of Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Taoism differ in their understanding of nonduality?
In this satsang, we’ll explore the concept of nonduality in the spiritual traditions of the East and ground it in direct experience of nonduality through guided meditations and contemplation. As always, there will be plenty of time for questions, dialogue, and discussion.
Stephan Bodian has been sharing the direct approach to spiritual awakening for more than 40 years. A former Buddhist monk, a licensed psychotherapist, and a longtime student of Advaita master Jean Klein, Stephan received Dharma transmission from Adyashanti in 2001. Since 2007 he has taught the annual months-long School for Awakening, which will begin again, in online form, in 2021. His books include Wake Up Now and Beyond Mindfulness.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within 48 hours.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Gail Brenner, Ph.D. ~ Living as Presence in Everyday Life – A Mini-Retreat
A 2 Day Mini Retreat:
Oct. 17 and 18, 2020
11:00 am – 1:00 pm, Pacific Time
Event will be recorded and emailed to participants after each meeting.
You’re welcome to join even if you can’t attend all the live sessions.
Come immerse yourself in a fresh way of being, fully aligned with your natural essence as whole, peaceful, primed for joy, and lacking nothing.
Longstanding conditioned patterns are profound invitations into liberation from the sense of separation.
Together in a safe and loving space, we’ll untangle the limited ways you think about yourself—addressing the critical mind, old stories from the past, tendencies to compare and feel inadequate. You’ll come away with skills to feel grounded within yourself and in your life, with more space to experience intimacy, generosity, and simple joy.
Our sessions will include guided meditation, small group sharing, Q&A, and joyful celebration together.
You’ll be invited to practice on your own between our sessions. Together, we lovingly embrace our humanness as we expand into overflowing appreciation, vibrant joy, and deep connection with all of Life.
If you have questions about this retreat, please email gail@gailbrenner.com.
“Gail creates, embodies and models a very safe space which is helping to create safety in myself on a day to day level which is Huge.” ~H.F.
“I’m definitely continuing to recommend this course primarily because I can feel Gail’s embodiment and pure transmission as she speaks.” ~Chantal K.
Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is your guide. She is a psychologist, author, speaker, and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She is an expert in healing from early trauma and brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups. She is known for her embodied presence and for creating the safe space needed for inner exploration. Gail is the author of the award-winning The End of Self-HelpandSuffering Is Optional.
Sliding Scale: $30 to $50
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ SOMATIC AWAKENING: Building Resilience
In this webinar Lynn Marie will explore awakening in the body through somatic practises for balancing the nervous system and building more resilience and capacity for regulating stress and emotions. Being more regulated and resilient is very important for both healing our human wounding and our spiritual awakening. Building resilience is especially important at this time of global stress, uncertainty, and rapid change. When our nervous system is dis-regulated, it reacts to life as though we are in danger and it doesn’t feel safe to let go and relax. This interferes with our ability to be present with our moment to moment experience and access the ever-present awareness. As you relax and and quiet down with the help of somatic practises, we will deepen into self-inquiry and connect with the ultimate resilience—the Silence of Being.
It is recommended to attend live, but if you cannot, you can still register and 
receive the recordings. The practises are designed for you to do repeatedly on your own, or through listening to the recordings.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a nondual psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and author. She offers knowledge and wisdom gained from over 30 years of experience as a therapist as well as with nondual teachings. She is the author of Awakened Relating: A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships and The Awakening West: Evidence of a Spreading Enlightenment.
Suggested donation: $15 to $35
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Jeannie Zandi ~ Em-body-ment
When we stop spiritually bypassing our humanity, hoping for a miracle cure, we get to look squarely at the process of embodiment. Join Jeannie and friends to explore the vital role of awareness of the body in the process of embodiment.
Jeannie’s gift for inviting people to join her in resting and rooted presence evokes a deep meeting with oneself and reality. Within that, Jeannie’s humor and iconoclasm serve to bring people into an understanding that is beyond the intellectual. Through silent and guided meditation, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions met fully. Come join us!
Jeannie is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeding a culture of the Heart on the planet, inspiring, teaching and supporting people to live from their essence as Love. A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living. Residing in Colorado, she travels widely in the US, bringing a down-to-earth embodied teaching of living as love.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Marlies Cocheret ~ Resting as Your Sovereignty
No matter what comes and goes, we are invited to rest unshakably as the empress or emperor of our universe, and fearlessly meet every moment as is, whether the realm is in harmony or suffering.
During this regular monthly satsang, Marlies gently guides us to rest in the silence of our being, our inner sanctuary. The more we rest as the silence that we are, the more this silence permeates our lives and the rest of the world.
As we fall into the arms of our true nature, sometimes that which is not silent may start to arise, such as trauma, pain, confusion, pleasure, etc. These are received and acknowledged in this space. With the assistance of Marlies’ presence as an anchor, your Being stands out as the only thing there really is … which is You!
We invite you to join us to deepen into the truth of your being.
There will be an opportunity to share, so please bring your experience, presence and questions to share with the group.
Marlies Myoku Cocheret has devoted her life to the Beloved. She brings a potent invitation into the deep Silence that we are. The kindness of her gentle and direct teaching guides us home like a lighthouse. She helps people to see that freedom and peace lie not in escaping from difficulties, but rather in completely welcoming and receiving all that the Mystery presents.
She has been offering satsang and retreat since 2000 when Adyashanti asked her to teach. Marlies is trained as a psychologist in The Netherlands, a Hakomi therapist, and a Tantric educator. For over 25 years she has been ushering seekers into living the Divine in the body. She has a passion and a gift for bringing together the Sensual Body and the Silence of our Being.
She lives in Santa Cruz; California and works internationally. Marlies is interviewed in the book Awakened Relating. A Guide To Embodying Undivided love in Intimate Relationships by Lynn Marie Lumiere, and in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom by R.M. Robinson
“With Adya, the bottom fell out. I deeply knew I am not this body, mind, thought, psyche, and I am also all these things as well. There was no in and/or out. All is One.”
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Tilicho ~ Awakening and Healing
During Satsang with Tilicho, we inquire about our Real Nature and bring awareness and healing to the traumas and mind patterns preventing us from really being ourselves: from opening to the present moment as it is.
You are invited to dive deep within, and from a place of Self-recognition to let all causes of suffering emerge to the surface - in a safe atmosphere of love, compassion and understanding.
Thanks to the very interactive format of the meeting, you’ll be able to receive personal guidance and suggestions about your awakening and healing journey.
Tilicho spontaneously realized the Self in 1998 without following any teaching or practice. The absence of spiritual conditioning allowed her to see through the veils of spiritual idealism and illusions. She ended up spending thirteen years in Tiruvannamalai in south India, the seat of Ramana Maharshi and the sacred mountain, Arunachala. While recognizing the beauty of the Advaita teachings, she also observed that they can easily be misunderstood and distorted. Although the Self is eternally free from the world, it is not separate from it. Clarity does not exclude openness. Her teaching stresses the need to combine Masculine and Feminine qualities and approaches. It is an invitation to find unity within and without.
Sliding Scale: $15 to $25
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
You're welcome to join, even if you can't attend the live session.
Time Zone Converter
November 2020
Loch Kelly ~ Direct Inquiry: The Power of How
“Loch Kelly is one of the clearest expressions of authentic awakened freedom and love
that I know. He offers wise, loving medicine and direct, practical guidance which evolved from Loch’s vast experience and deep commitment to help others awaken to spiritual freedom.”
~ Adyashanti from Shift Into Freedom
The two most common approaches of direct awakening are 1) the do nothing or resting method and 2) the looking or inquiry method.
The Direct Inquiry approach begins with a looking method of awareness of awareness. However it does not stop with pure awareness but continues to untie knots of confusion to abide and live an awakened life. This natural unfolding moves from Waking up --- from small self, Waking as---the ground of awake awareness, Waking in --- awake awareness arises simultaneously as energy, love and embodiment, Waking out --- to create and relate from embodied, loving, awake consciousness.
How do we recognize our True nature if it can’t be done by the seeker, ego, doer, self, will, attention or a meditator? Our already awake awareness can intentionally unhook from being identified with our small self-center.
In Zen direct inquiry is described as “taking the backward step” In the Toasist book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, the secret is “turn the light of awareness around.” In Tibetan, the word “recognition”, is translated as “looking back at your own face.” In Mahamudra, it is described as “child awareness returns to mother awareness.” Only then do we have the capacity to unburden traumatized parts of us and reveal flourishing positive qualities.
Awake awareness is not ultimately passive but has intelligence and intentionality which allows us to live an awakened life. Direct Inquiry becomes the power of how to awaken when local awake awareness is discovered to be a reliable tuner.
Please join Loch in this experiential opportunity to learn how to access local awake awareness to intentionally glimpse and live from embodied open-hearted awareness.
Loch Kelly, M.Div., LCSW is an author of the award winning book The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. He is a licensed psychotherapist and recognized leader in the field of meditation and awakening. Loch is the founder of the non-profit, Open-Hearted Awareness Institute and has worked in community mental health, established homeless shelters and taught meditation to first responders in NYC during Covid-19. Loch graduated from Columbia University where he received a traveling fellowship to Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. Loch is known for his warm sense of humor, and his trust that awakening is the next natural stage of development. He teaches the advanced, yet simple, nondual pointers and direct methods of effortless mindfulness, informed by psychology and social justice. Loch collaborates with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU in the study of how awareness training can enhance compassion and wellbeing.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
As of SUNDAY morning 2 AM on NOV. 1st, clocks in the USA are turned back 1 hour.
Daylight Savings Time ends.
Times shown here will be Pacific Standard Time starting early am Sunday Nov. 1, 2020
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ SOMATIC AWAKENING: Transforming Core Beliefs
In this meeting, Lynn Marie offers a group process using the Flash Technique, a therapeutic method designed to reduce the charge on traumatic or painful memories and the grip of negative beliefs associated with them. This will then make it possible to truly transform these memories and beliefs held in the body-mind in awake awareness through a guided self-inquiry. There will be also be plenty of time for group process and sharing as well as individual assistance if needed.
This is an ongoing group that you can join anytime. It is recommended that you attend live, if possible, since it involves a deep therapeutic process. This would allow you to ask questions and receive individual guidance if needed. However, you are also welcome to register and do the process with the recording. If questions arise, you are welcome to contact Lynn Marie at lumieremft@gmail.com, or contact your regular therapist.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a nondual psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and author. She offers knowledge and wisdom gained from over 30 years of experience as a therapist as well as with nondual teachings. She is the author of Awakened Relating: A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships and The Awakening West: Evidence of a Spreading Enlightenment.
Suggested donation: $15 to $35
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter